It has been a while since I’ve seen a new logo or revised logo worth talking about on these pages. I know many readers are voiceover-centric and not quote the logo addict I seem to have become. As addictions go, it’s not a bad one.

As many of you also know I have a soft spot in my heart for the American Red Cross and the work they do. So when I saw recently on Brand New the updated logo for the American Red Cross, I thought I’d take a second to chat it up with you.

Of course for many of a certain age, if they think about it, this is the only American Red Cross logo they’ve known and by and large, it has been pretty consistent. So a change on this puppy is noteworthy.

What I noted right off the bat were three things: the cross surrounded by the modern, shadowed button icon made popular by icons designed for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, et al; the change of the color or the word mark from black to gray and the darkened red of the Red Cross.

The button reminded me, as I said, of social media logos but also I recall (I think) seeing pins like that on people’s jackets or sweaters at the Red Cross, so I was cool with it.

The graying of the word mark seems intent on making it modern, and I get it. I think the black made it stand out more and it’s a name I don’t think should be put in the background. I believe they changed their font to this current font on their last logo change and I think they were smart not to change that in this iteration.

What I am really undecided about is the darker red. The red in the Red Cross is the ball game. I get that there needed to be shading on the red to help with the button design but it just strikes me as too dark. The vibrancy of the red is the key to the whole icon.

Overall, a nice change. But that’s my opinion…what’s yours?

Tags: advertising, branding, commentary, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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My friend and bilingual voiceover talent Liz deNesnera recently achieved one of her written goals from Faffcon 3 which was to redesign her web site and rebrand her company.

Take a look for yourself but I think she did a very nice job.

Tags: advertising, branding, marketing, social media, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Yeah OK, I get that a new Twitter background is NOT that exciting a topic for a blog, what with everybody using TweetDeck and the like; nobody ever sees one’s Twitter home page.

Well somebody might and if you click on my page you’ll see it now.

Why is it important? Well I had my last Twitter background page designed JUST before Twitter switched to a new page layout (bast—-!). So I went a year ignoring the ill fitting background page just to spite Twitter.

Twitter called me recently and asked if I would update my background page and apologized for changing the page layout right after I’d gotten the design done.

So being the forgiving type, I said sure and now alls right with the world.

Please Tweet to everyone about this exciting news. Why? Because you can!

Tags: branding, community, logo design, marketing, social media, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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There are two or three voiceover coaches who post so much on Facebook, Voiceover Universe and Twitter et al about their latest seminars in Tupelo, Mississippi or where ever that I’ve simply unfriended them. Social media for them is an endless informercial, I guess.

Oy.

Evidently so many voice talents have sooo much new business – based on all the Facebinkedinwitter posts I read from them – that there may be no voice over jobs left for me (or you for that matter) so we all should just quit. It’s like an accountant in April posting “I just completed another tax return!” Um, pal, that what you’re supposed to do.

The debate over the best microphone has become so intense that two voiceover talents will duel to the death tomorrow morning– their weapons of choice will be a Neumann TLM 103 and a Sennheiser 416. It begs the question if two voice over talents die in the forest, who will announce it?

And it will surprise you to learn that voxmarketising is NOT the only blog on the topic of voiceover – at last count there were 14 billion voice over blogs, all of them debating whether breaths should or should not be edited out of narrations.

Obviously I’m being silly but the truth is: in the voiceover business, we talk a lot.

When it’s not on mic, it’s on line.

The trouble is we’re ALL talking about the same things…over and over. And I think I’m getting burnt out.

That’s a bad thing because while I thought I was contributing to the conversation, I wondering now if I’ve simply been contributing to the noise.

Paul Strikwerda, my Double Dutch voiceover friend, recently wrote about this issue, which I have been bandying about in my head for a while. He’s felt tad bored by what he’s read.

My concern is not that I’m bored (I know how to fix that – change the channel, hit the off switch) but rather that I’m the one being boring. I’ve actually cut back a bit on my social media and blogging because I didn’t feel I had anything interesting to contribute. I’m not sure “my perspective” is always enough.

Thinking about it that way made me feel a little better because at least I was thinking before typing. I think when it comes to Social Media, that’s not done a lot (and it’s not an issue exclusive to voice over talents, believe me). I’ve also been guilty as charged so don’t think I’m casting aspersions (so please, no emails from aspersions looking for voice work).

It seems we’re now all (and that “all” was a lot smaller when I started in Social Media) talking about the same voice over topics and from where I sit (just one man’s opinion here) the individual perspectives don’t always seem unique enough or even thought-provoking…and again, myself included.

I know we all just want to be heard and we all enjoy freedom of expression and that’s great. I don’t want it stifled but shouldn’t we all consider a little self-editing? Just a little?

I don’t know about you but I do NOT want to be the “oh not THAT guy again” brand. The line between frequency and obnoxious gets thin fast in social media; brands are now suffering (and not reaping).

SEO and marketing opportunities available through Social Media are so enticing (based on cost) that I think we all forget sometimes that for Social Media to be effective, we have to be maybe less frequent but certainly more interesting. And that’s not always easy.

Nor should it be.

What do you think? Or are you even paying attention anymore? 🙂

Tags: advertising, blogs, branding, commentary, commercials, facebook, linkedin, networking, public relations, social media, social networks and links, technology, twitter, voice over training, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I caught online in “The Atlantic” a report from The American Customer Satisfaction Index (no, I didn’t know there was such a thing either) rating the least liked companies in America. You can find the report here. I could add my two cents on the report (as I am a customer of more than a few of the hated) but a more intriguing question came into my mind.

What if my company had appeared on the list? Or for that matter, your company?

One would assume, probably rightly so, that we as large companies might have some inkling of trouble long before a report like the Atlantic’s came out. But you and I don’t own multi-billion dollar companies with teams of marketing and PR geniuses to tell us these things, do we?

It’s just us. All alone. Not sure if we’re beloved, hated or even worse – ignored.

The best advice I can offer is simply this: communicate. And, no I don’t do this nearly enough either.

Communicate doesn’t mean sell. Eblasts about your latest voiceover project don’t count.

At the end of the day, people do business with friends. And while you can’t make friends with every client you have based on geography or chemistry, you can at least show interest. Make a call on the phone or best in person.

Say hi, ask about a project you worked on…is it going well etc. You can mention that if they have any future work etc., but don’t make it a selling call. You need to look up some breaking client news or some salient topic that can begin your conversation.

Which means you’ve got some work to do before you pick up the phone, don’t you?

Yup, but I’m guessing it will be time very well spent.

Tags: branding, commentary, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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So word came down on Twitter today (isn’t that where all news comes from that isn’t already on Facebook…what newspaper?!!) that heritage AM station WBEN/Buffalo was going to be simulcast on another station in the Entercom cluster, WLKK-FM (107.7). The Lake, as the station was known, hadn’t really moved the needle among listeners or advertisers.

So now WBEN will be heard on AM 930 and FM 107.7 – with this news came what seems to be a new logo. Variations of the old WBEN logo have been around for a decade or more.

The new logo – if it is indeed the final version – is bad. Vague city scapes and big call letters (meant to infer how the station covers or engulfs the city with its coverage) never work. They also reproduce badly in newspaper ads and on the web.

I listen to the station and I don’t have to look at the logo so I suppose I shouldn’t care – except it’s a logo and I notice these things. You’d hope a station group as big as Entercom would have a bit more graphic moxie to produce (or even steal from another one of their stations in another market) a logo better than this one.

Maybe this new logo is just a draft.

Kinda like this one I whipped up pretty fast:

Tags: branding, broadcasting, buffalo, logo design, radio by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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